Photo Evidence: Music House Gets Authored, Punished

Last night, industrial noise-maker Author & Punisher brought his doom-inspired sounds to Music House. If nothing else, the performance marked a special occurrence in my Wesleyan career: it was the first time I have seen an experimental musician make use of Eugene Onegin as live gear on stage.

Festivities kicked off with hardcore powerviolence quartet Backshi, whose subject matter is described as “pegging, bodily functions, queer shit, more hateful than ever.” Featuring Jason Kilbourne ’14, Stephan Stansfield ’13, Max Seppo ’14, and Mike Massone ’14, the band previously performed at last May’s Weezer/Green Day showcase. Their energetic stage presence and general exuberance leads me to endorse them enthusiastically for Spring Fling 2013. Here’s a video:

Next up, one-man industrial band Author & Punisher began setting up his “custom-made machines fabricated from raw materials and utilizing open source circuitry,” which, true to description, physically surrounded the musician with metallic sheen, thus highlighting “the eroticism of interaction with machine.” But when A & P began performing—his compositions mostly consisted of metallic lurches, robotic-voiced vocals, plodding doom-style percussive breaks, and hand-operated tone-shift effects, all of which you can feel pretty pretty solidly in your gut—’eroticism’ wasn’t really the word on my mind.  “Lonely,” one of the artist’s song titles, seemed a better fit. In the tradition of Kraftwerk’s “Computer Love,” this is eerily isolated industrial music obsessed with the icy sonic bonds between human and machine. Plus, as this demo video should demonstrate, it’s weirdly fun to watch.

Whether you went to this performance (and a good 30 or more of you did) or avoided it at all costs, there’s a pretty good chance you don’t regret your decision.

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